Jagdverband 44

Heroes or Outcasts?

To have experienced World War 2 during February 1945 as a senior German fighter commander serving on the Western Front and in the Reichsverteidigung (the aerial defence of the Reich) would have left one with a sense of depressing, and probably forbidding, metamorphosis.

The tide of war was ebbing relentlessly against Germany.

For these veteran commanders, there were, firstly, the immediate challenges in virtually every aspect of their lives – the daunting prospect of maintaining the morale of those under their command at a level high enough to continue to fight whilst deployed against an enemy with infinitely superior forces. They also had to sustain an acceptable level of operational efficiency amidst supply difficulties, if not shortages, in manpower, fuel, spares, ammunition and even food.

Then there was personal exhaustion, especially amongst leaders who had fought with success and distinction in air battles on virtually every front for four or five years – from Poland to England, from the Soviet Union and the Far North to Africa. True, there had been the accolades in the form of decorations and promotions, the glory and the fame, but at what cost? Thousands of their comrades left dead and the mental and physical toll on their own bodies and minds.

The process of metamorphosis from certain victory to what seemed irreversible defeat raised questions. Despite promises and assurances, the much vaunted V-weapons had not reversed the tide for Germany. News from the battlefronts in the Ardennes was not good either, as the last effort to close the Bastogne corridor had failed, causing von Rundstedt’s offensive to stall. The situation in the East was not encouraging, either, with the Red Army having advanced on the Oder and encircled Budapest.

On the home front, German civilians had come to accept their grim lot, living under an endless rain of Allied bombs while, outnumbered and outgunned, the Luftwaffe struggled to take on the bombers which struck city after city, factory after factory, month after month.

The officers leading these hard-pressed fighter units must have questioned, most of them privately, the policies of their superiors and high-level commanders. Even the most hardened of their number must have occasionally averted their gaze from the eyes of the young and outwardly eager, but inwardly frightened and ill-trained, replacements who now replenished the ranks of the Jagdverbände.

But still they fought on.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1945, in an attempt to strike a decisive blow against the Allied tactical air forces, the Luftwaffe had launched a surprise low-level attack against 21 enemy airfields in North West Europe. Codenamed Operation Bodenplatte, it had been conceived under great secrecy by Generalmajor Dietrich Peltz, a highly decorated former bomber pilot who had been appointed to direct II. Jagdkorps, the main fighter command operating on the Western Front. Peltz was assisted by an experienced staff comprising fighter veterans Oberst Walter Grabmann, Oberst Hans Trubenbach and Oberstleutnant Gotthardt Handrick.

The attack deployed 41 Gruppen drawn from ten Jagdgeschwader and one Schlachtgeschwader, as well as Me 262 and Ar 234 jet bombers from KG 51 and KG 76 – in all a force of more than 900 aircraft. It was a monumental effort for the Luftwaffe to mount such an operation at this stage of the war. To the planners’ credit, it achieved significant surprise, and – for a brief period – probably served to lift the spirits of many a war-weary or doubting Jagdflieger. It is believed that 388 Allied aircraft were destroyed or damaged as a result of Bodenplatte. The effects on the German side, however, were at best questionable and at worst very grave.